


1922

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Epistolary [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom!Hannibal, Domesticity, Established Relationship, Flashback, Flirting, Fluff, Intimacy, Kitchen Sex, M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:47:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5124674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I’ve missed this,” he admits. “These terrible illicit things we did together.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Every damnable day,” Will agrees, sinking against Hannibal’s body and joining their lips in a rough kiss. Noses bumping, their mouths part to allow their tongues to twist together between them. Firm bodies press flush together as Will rocks down against him, gasping softly before he laughs. “And more still every night.”</i>
</p><p>Follows on directly from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4718288">1921</a>, which actually ended in 1922. All beta'd by the extraordinary <a href="http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/">Noodle</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinneykid3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinneykid3/gifts).



_London, 1922_

When Will stirs with a start from sleep, the hour is unknown to him. There is darkness yet beyond the heavy velvet curtains, cabernet red, and the light still glows golden where Will switched it on hours before. Satin the color of eggplant whispers beneath his hands as he pushes himself up to sit, only to find a barrier across his chest. Familiar fingers curled softly above his heart, slender wrist and a sharp elbow, lithe muscles leading to broad shoulder.

And Hannibal, long lashes fluttering against his cheeks as he too, stirs.

Will’s skin is stiff where their release has dried, unminded, his cock stuck to his thigh. He wraps his hand against Hannibal’s own and brings soft fingers to his lips, kissing each in turn before leaning low to kiss the man himself. Hannibal’s smile widens, but he does not yet allow his eyes to open.

“How do you do,” Will whispers against his cheek, grinning.

Hannibal hums, his smile widening further as he turns his face against Will’s, then down against his chest again in a sleepy nuzzle. He thinks of how, years ago, he had woken to similar words, only then they had sounded as a mumble of nonsense as he had forced himself awake and kissed Will to silence again.

Idiots, they were, back then. Hannibal is delighted that they can be, together, still.

They are young, yet, despite the war pushing years upon them they have yet to live through but have certainly earned.

“I fear as though I am caught in a very pleasant dream, and I refuse to wake up from it today,” he murmurs.

Will tilts his head enough to watch Hannibal there, his lips parted against Will’s skin, breath slowed still from sleep. Lifting a hand, Will traces Hannibal’s hair behind his ear, following the bold line of his jaw to raise his chin, and meet his hooded gaze.

“Then dream with me.” Will ignores the fussy noise as he unseats Hannibal gently from his chest, turning to his side and tucking an elbow beneath. Watching in nothing less than rapt fascination as Hannibal rubs his cheek against the cool satin, Will leans low to kiss the corner of his mouth.

“Or at least,” he offers, boyish and bright, “tell me where is your bathroom, before I lose you to sleep once more and must lay in dire anticipation of the next moment I can kiss you again.”

Hannibal laughs, just a low deep sound, and spreads his lips in a grin wide enough to just show his teeth, eyes still closed. Carefully he raises his hand and points, first to the door, then to the left, before lowering his hand back and nuzzling the hand Will has against him.

“Do hurry back,” Hannibal tells him. “I miss you already.”

He lets Will go and opens his eyes slowly as Will stands and, deliberately ignoring his cane, limps out and to the left, seeking the bathroom. Hannibal can’t help but smile more. He is so beautiful. He is so proud and strong and clever - the man Hannibal fell so madly in love with over four days together in Paris.

Will finds his way, turning on a light as he goes. It is a lovely home, though grand in its appointments for an exterior so relatively modest. Rich textures and vibrant patterns, jewel tones and glints of gold. It is Hannibal, in domestic form, given money to run rampant in outfitting a palace for a peacock. And it is large, enormously so, for one man living alone.

Bracing an arm against the wall to relieve himself, Will cannot help but recall that Hannibal said he knew, in some way, he hoped that they would find their way together again. The home feels as if it were awaiting him, and perhaps it has been. Hannibal has no wife, though certainly could have acquired his choice of well-bred companions. He has mentioned no acquaintances or friends in his letters.

Will breathes deep of the spiced soap before washing his hands and stomach clean with it, and all at once the glamor that surrounds him feels empty. A reconstruction of happier times but without the life and revelry that made it so. His heart breaks, a gentle agony, and once dried with soft towels freshly laid - for two, not for one - Will makes his way back to the bedroom where Hannibal lays waiting.

He has propped himself to the headboard, one lanky leg drawn up, and still beautifully bare. Will looks away from him, nearly shy when held in a gaze of such overwhelming adoration, and seeks his bag. Cigarettes first find their way to his hand, and Will remains standing, tilted to his good leg, as he sets two between his lips, and then decides on only one.

Smoke unspooling from his lips, he offers it to Hannibal, smiling.

“Your gift,” he reminds him. “Let me show you.”

Hannibal reaches for the cigarette, gratefully taking a drag and lying back to exhale it towards the ceiling. 

“Mmm - you mean more than you, here, with me for your summer?” He smiles, turns his head to narrow his eyes at Will, pressing the filter between his lips before passing it back, stroking his fingers with Will’s in reassuring softness. “You spoil me, Englishman.”

With a grin, Hannibal pulls back the blankets once more, welcoming Will into them for when he gathers his gift - a gift! - and returns to bed. Immediately, Hannibal settles his head against Will’s shoulder, resting close, kissing soft against the thin skin against his collarbone.

Cigarette perched between his lips, dangling precarious with the width of his grin, Will produces a record and offers it as if in tribute.

“Erik Satie,” Hannibal reads, lips remaining parted in sweet surprise.

“Do you remember?”

“How could I not,” muses Hannibal. “The hymn of Montmartre for my entire time there.”

“Hell,” laughs Will, cigarette between his fingers as he runs a hand down his face, drawing up a knee to tent the sheets. “Do you have it already?”

“No,” Hannibal answers simply, reaching to arch his neck and have Will set the filter between his lips for a drag, so he doesn’t have to let go of the precious and beautiful record. “But who the better to be my messenger with it, than you.”

Hannibal sits up a little, enough to roll his shoulders in a stretch, and turns to look at Will, narrow-eyed and delighted.

“Shall I play it?”

“Please,” Will tells him, accepting the kiss that comes as his reward, and the next. And the next, but with a laugh. Finally Hannibal strips back the sheets with a flourish, seeking out his phonograph with long - intentionally long - strides to where it sits in the corner of his room. A glance across his shoulder rivets goosebumps across Will’s skin. Reaching beneath his crippled leg, he drags that knee higher too, to fold his arms across and set his chin upon them.

With a sigh, feigning put-upon, Hannibal bends so slowly that Will is forced to bite his lip to trap the moan that unfurls from him despite. Cigarette crackling as he drags, Will watches the lean stretch of Hannibal’s legs, rising tall to the round bend of his bottom. He chokes on his drag when Hannibal bends his back a little, pushing up his hips. Coughing smoke into his fist, Will struggles to regain his breath so easily stolen as Hannibal regards him with a wry smile.

The first piano notes are bliss. Heaven. There is no sweeter sound in the world that does not issue from Hannibal himself, nor lovelier music than that which filled the air during their time together in Paris.

“It sounds far more optimistic now, doesn’t it,” Will finally says, voice hoarse but smile wide as Hannibal returns. “Shall I tell you how I acquired it? Once you have acquired an ashtray so I don’t filthy up your bed more than I already have?”

“I’m sure our bed will hardly suffer,” Hannibal replies, running a hand through messy curls but moving to gather an ashtray regardless. Elaborate and glass, nothing so cheap as an old can, like they had back in Paris. Will laughs and ashes his cigarette into it as Hannibal crawls into bed, on all fours before Will, smiling at him and taking the cigarette when it is offered.

“It must be quite a tale,” he says, smiling even wider as he shifts to mirror Will’s position, though unlike Will he doesn’t have the blanket to cover himself, and sits proudly bare before his lover, letting him see and look as he likes. “You always have been entirely extraordinary.”

“Embarrassing,” Will corrects him. “I believe that is the word you meant.”

“There are much better things you could put in my mouth than words.”

“And so I shall,” decides Will, tilting his head to watch Hannibal’s lips curl against his fingers when he holds the cigarette for him again. Will reaches to bring the ashtray near, setting it carefully beside them on the bed, and he inches closer to sit against Hannibal’s side, nestled near with a hand against his thigh.

“You see,” he tells him, “the name was never known to me. Or if it had been said, I could not distinguish it from the rest of the words. Not only embarrassing -”

“Extraordinary.”

“- but ignorant,” Will finishes, eyes drawn up in a smile as he drags again. “I could not forget the feel of it, the feel of you against me accompanied by it, but I’ve no more mind for music than language and so when I struck out, in a fit of nostalgia to find it, I was already handicapped.”

Around them, the music coils, like the smoke from their cigarette, like the dust motes did in Paris, caught in the beam of light from the dirty window, their fingers in its light, turning and curling together in sleepy pleasure.

“Do not tell me you attempted to sing this to your fellow faculty members,” Hannibal laughs. “Your singing voice was never your most admirable quality.” He laughs again as Will shoves him, grinning up at him and reaching for the cigarette again, sitting near, once more, to kiss Will’s cheek as he hands it back.

His legs he uncurls to lie straight out in front of him, toes splaying and stretching, before he slips further down the bed and draws up one knee once more, hand settled against Will’s thigh as he watches him and listens.

“God no,” Will sighs. “Worse than. The sensation of the song in me was vivid, but even the melody evaded. But my College is known for its prowess in music, despite my being there -”

“Oh dear.”

“And so I sought out every tutor within the entire College. One after the next after the next until the last saw me coming and only sighed, exasperated. Every one of them, I asked about,” Will pauses, clearing his throat and furrowing his brow, motioning in very stern movements with his hand. “‘A song, on piano. Possibly French, I’m really not sure. It has about it a melancholic air and yet isn’t sad so much as bittersweet. Do you know it?’”

Hannibal laughs again, a hand up to his face, arching his back with a soft sound after as though to stretch, but his body coils in a way that is hardly good for more than sly and beautiful presentation.

“It is safe to say that no one had much to offer me beyond a shake of their head and amused pity.”

“And yet you found it,” Hannibal points out, taking the cigarette and sucking in the last long drag from it before setting it to the ashtray and breathing out a cool plume of smoke. “My clever Englishman, tell me how.”

When the ashtray is set aside, Will turns to curl against Hannibal. Disentangling himself from the sheets, he lifts his leg - scars and all - to twine with Hannibal’s own, head on his shoulder, and fingers spreading through the hair on his chest. His smile widens.

“On my way to tutes - a tutoring session,” he clarifies, “while walking from my room I heard it. So softly that I thought it my own imagination, but I followed the spirit of the sound until it grew a little louder. One of the students, a fresher no less, whom I hardly knew nearly died by my hand when I burst through his door.”

Hannibal snorts, grinning, a hand over his mouth.

“Cane upraised, I demanded to know what he was playing, immediately,” laughs Will. “You’ve never seen the blood drain from someone’s face so quickly, I thought he’d drop dead right before me. All he could do was apologize again and again and claim he’d kept it on its softest setting, nearly breaking the needle of his phonograph in his haste to silence it.”

“You are a terror,” Hannibal laughs, turning to nuzzle against Will’s hair, to kiss there, fingers stroking gentle against the tangled curls. “Frightening innocent students that way. Don’t tell me you took the poor boy’s record.”

“No!” Will laughs, shaking against Hannibal as he does, and Hannibal slips his palm down his side and over his hip, slowing as he strokes over Will’s thigh, sets his fingers behind his knee and bends it just a little more before touching soft from calf to ankle. “No, God, I bought one for us on my own. Like an adult.”

“Ah, so you have grown up,” Hannibal muses, delighting in Will’s fussy squirming against him as he holds him close, so comfortable just being wrapped around this man again. He noses against Will’s temple and kisses there, too. “Thank you.”

Will makes a peaceable little sound, turning to catch the next kiss against his lips. “You’re welcome,” he murmurs, eyes closing as their noses brush, foreheads set together. “I should confess -”

“Only very wonderful or very terrible things can come of doing that.”

“Hush,” grins Will, prodding a finger into Hannibal’s side. “I should confess that I listened to it, many times since acquiring it a few weeks past. Thank God I found it when I did, and it brought happy memories and anticipation.”

“Do you have unhappy memories of me?”

“None at all, but had I not known where you were, still, had I not been so near to seeing you again, I imagine it would have lead to a truly shameful amount of nights weeping into my whiskey for want of knowing what became of you.”

Hannibal makes a gentle hushing sound, murmuring something in brisk French before wrapping Will in his arms tighter and shifting them both down the bed to lay comfortably tangled. They need to eat, Hannibal knows. They need to eat just to sustain themselves because in truth they need not do anything else but stay in bed together.

Should Will want to play more records, they are there. Should they wish to listen to the radio, there is one of those as well. A library of books. Collections of magazines and interesting paraphernalia. Anything to occupy them should they wish to venture from the bedroom.

“My friends,” Hannibal says at length. “They teased me for weeks after you had gone, calling me silly names and exclaiming that I had become as a woman over you. I missed you terribly, I drank more and smoked more and stayed in that little attic room where every creak of the bed reminded me of you.”

“You must have been lovely,” Will suggests, delighting in the dismissive snort this earns him. “Draped in all your finery, despondent. I’m surprised they didn’t find your tragedy moving.”

“Oh, they certainly did. It moved them to ask if they should build a widow’s walk outside the window, so I could await my soldier’s return from war and be swept away to the English countryside. It moved them to ply me with endless bottles of all manner of drink in hopes to ignite life back into me.”

“Would that the war had ended then,” Will murmurs. “Or that I had been brave enough to -”

“Desertion would have branded you a traitor, to be pursued to all the ends of the empire, and what if they found us then?” Hannibal responds. There is no accusation in him now, and Will’s guilt is tempered by the truth of his words. Prison at best, execution at worst. And no kinder fate for Hannibal, to be found in such flagrant defiance of English moral standards.

Will tucks his head closer and kisses warmth to Hannibal’s pulse, hand spanning across his heart.

“And when you told them you were going?” He asks.

Hannibal adjusts so that he can trace his fingers down Will’s arm, splay his own fingers against Will’s and slowly slot them with his own.

“They were surprised to hear me wanting to volunteer. Many of their jests stopped then, some worried I was going to my death in doing so.” Hannibal smiles, eyes down to watch his Will, the way their fingers slip so comfortably together. “I told them I could die in bed from alcohol poisoning or I could go to war and try to help someone before that happened.”

“Hannibal.”

“I had never taken my education for granted. Much as I enjoyed the Bohemian life, and lord knows I did, it was a pastime, a way to be with like-minded people who knew how to laugh and drink and share love freely together. I knew I was meant for more, so I went.”

Will brings their joined hands to his mouth, tracing each of Hannibal’s fingers with his lips as he watches him. “And you call me brave,” he murmurs.

“You are.”

“And you,” Will says. “You who pulled yourself from melancholy and sought greater good. You who risked your own life to save those of others.”

He does not observe aloud the shock it must have been, to emerge from booze-soaked Paris into the Great War. The lives he saved and those he did not, the horrors of gas and machinegun fire, infections run rampant and eyes closed beneath his hand so many years sooner than they should have been. They both know well enough. Neither could forget.

“And here you are,” Will adds, eyes brightening as Hannibal turns to him, releasing a pensive bite against his lower lip to smile in return. “Untarnished and whole. Brighter in fact for your service, made brilliant once you emerged from beneath your nest of silk.”

Hannibal draws a breath, holds it long, and when he sighs, it is with a lofty little tip of his chin. “Do not malign my silks.”

“Never would I dare.”

“You looked very fetching in my oriental robe,” Hannibal reminds him. “Parading about our room, proud and utterly bare beneath, reciting poetry I couldn’t understand and stopping every few stanzas to kiss me and steal my cigarette.”

“It was mine.”

“But I lit it.”

Will laughs, and Hannibal with him, contented to remember Paris this way, now that they are in each other’s arms again, close and warm and loved. Always loved.

“I missed you terribly,” Hannibal repeats. “I was terrified I would never see you again. So many men of your name were enlisted, I had little else to go on. I just hoped that of the two named on the lists of the deceased were not you.”

Hannibal kisses him again, long and lingering and then hums. The music continues to move around them, taking in the space and settling within it.

“To kinder things,” he says. “Shall I make you breakfast?”

For a moment more, Will is quiet. He cannot imagine the sinking terror that Hannibal must have felt to see his name there, to not know and to have no means of discovering whether it was his own Will or another. Will’s own experience was a great void, seeking hopeless through Parisian streets for a given name, only, no surname known to him. A shiver tugs through his skin but warm hands settle it, and Will accepts, with an easing breath, the change of conversation.

He also looks, past the curtains, to the sliver of darkness just past.

“You’ve no clock that I’ve seen, but it appears to be the middle of the night.”

“So it is,” Hannibal challenges, brow lifting. Will grins at him, sliding an arm around his shoulder and threading his fingers through his hair.

“Will you scold me as you did before if I say yes?”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow in devious delight. “How did you know?”

“It was not hard to assume. The particular tenor of your voice and an insistent tug against my ankle, followed by the arrival of food and drink soon after,” Will says, tucking another kiss against Hannibal’s temple before he slowly begins to make his way from the bed. “Yes, Hannibal, I would gratefully enjoy anything you make for me. We will need our fuel, I think, for the strenuous days ahead.”

“At least now you listen, as you did not then,” Hannibal points out. “God, how I scolded you, telling you to eat and drink something other than wine, and to come here, dammit, when you were so determined to dress for some ungodly reason to leave the room.”

“So I did not have to parade the home you and your friend had rented in the nude.”

“I did.”

“You lived there! They knew you!”

“Oh believe me, darling boy, they knew you by voice alone,” Hannibal points out, delighted at Will’s wide eyes and slack jaw. He steps close to kiss him, allowing himself to be caught for it.

Eager hands seek across warm skin, pulling hips to hips and tugging hair. Their lips twist together ferocious, more fiercely in love than even before, though both would argue it impossible. Will tugs free first but only to sink a lingering kiss to Hannibal’s throat, pulling it flush against his tongue and leaving a pale pink mark there that Hannibal traces after with his fingertips.

“And you,” he murmurs. “So loud that I imagine houses two streets over were wakened by you.”

“Your fault, entirely.”

“Proudly so,” Will says, as Hannibal slips free of his grasp and Will follows, a hand discreetly set to the wall to steady his limp. “I had not an inkling most times of what you said to me - only context. You did not care for me leaving my things on the floor.”

“Dreadful messes, utterly uncivilized.”

“Not at all like you, preparing an entire afternoon in advance for an evening out. By preparing I mean, of course, polishing off a bottle of champagne entirely on your own, and then laying out every cravat in your collection and looking at me with expectation. And every single time I chose one -”

“It was the wrong color,” Hannibal tells him. “Or the wrong pattern. You had terrible taste in refined dressing.”

“Refined?” Will laughs, and Hannibal turns to catch him in a kiss, before continuing on to the kitchen, both entirely bare, both hardly caring. He flicks on the light and illuminates the space.

“You took my favourite, by the way,” Hannibal tells him, glancing over his shoulder at Will as he leans against the wall, arms crossed. “When you left. I was glad for it, it’s the one that suited you the most.”

“Don’t speak of it in past tense,” responds Will.

“You don’t still have it.”

“In my luggage, just in there,” he says, cheeks warming as Hannibal regards him with genuine surprise. “It hardly looks as lovely as it did, bound across your eyes when you guided me to do so. But you tucked it in my breast pocket -”

“I remember.”

“And there it remained. Hidden of course from inspections, the unfortunate recipient of leaking grease and dull grey mud, but always that part of you was with me. I found it there still when I recovered my uniform after convalescence, and kept it safely tucked among my things at the College. Any time I traveled or felt at all uncertain, about anything really, I would take it with me, to bring me luck.” Will ducks his head to try hiding the blush of gentle embarrassment beneath his eyes, smiling crooked. “Now I’ve gone and ruined the illusion, haven’t I? There’s little less soldierly than sentimentality”

Hannibal watches him for a moment more before stepping close again and taking Will’s face in his hands, gentle, like one would cradle a baby bird, and he rests their foreheads together with a sigh, a small sound escaping him. For a while they just stay that way, Will’s eyes softly closing as Hannibal breathes against him, turns his face to nuzzle him before folding Will into an embrace again.

“Cruel boy,” he whispers, laughing softly. “You will make me weep and then all illusions will be ruined of me.”

Will encircles Hannibal in his arms, both still bare and neither caring.

“No,” Will promises. “Not for an instant. It seems entirely within your nature to weep for tender things, and lovely things, and terrible things.”

Tugging back just a little, enough to bring their gazes to meet, Hannibal’s lips part but before he can speak Will kisses him.

“I recall all too well the promise of tears when we were together, in fact,” Will tells him, running a thumb beneath Hannibal’s eye. “A bottle of wine, nearly full, soaked into the floorboards when you threw out your arm too suddenly to grasp the headboard.”

Hannibal laughs, ducking his head at the memory. Never had he been more open with his responses, more genuine with his pleasure than with Will. And Will had turned him inside out for enjoyment. Himself, too, Hannibal recalls with delight.

“I cannot wait to see how you will make me destroy this house as I nearly destroyed our room.”

“No more candles, please.”

“No more candles,” Hannibal promises, grinning bright and kissing Will chastely once more. “Now, beautiful distraction as you are, will you help me with breakfast, hinder me in making it, or sit at the table and wait for it to be brought to you?”

“I will attempt the first and undoubtedly settle upon the second,” Will says, taking another little kiss before relinquishing Hannibal to his freedom.

He follows his lead, seeking out items that Hannibal requests. It does not take long for Will’s shyness in being bare to fall away entirely. Even his discomfort of movement is at best an afterthought, requiring only an occasional steadying when he has to bend low to fetch eggs or stretch to seek out plates. And when he does, a mild tremor from the movement, he feels Hannibal’s hand against his back, not to help but only in comfort, support shared between both.

In truth, Will can think of little at all beyond Hannibal himself. The elegance with which he cooks and the sleek movements of his form; the candor of his affection and the charming smile that lingers everlasting in the muscles beneath his eyes. How unlikely they both are, each, and near-impossible in the probability of their togetherness now. And how quickly they have surpassed even the comfort that filled them in Paris, with lived experiences to ground them and words to be shared.

Yet despite this growth, flourishing with promise, they are perhaps much the same. And so of course it is Will who moves first, as he passes beside Hannibal at the stove, and trails fingertips beneath the round of his bottom.

Hannibal draws a breath, fingers curling around his knife mid-chop, against the counter where he rested for balance… A simple brush of fingers and already Hannibal’s entire body feels almost electrified. He can sense Will in every way, just there, just close enough to touch and he resists. Instead, he spreads his fingers against the counter, then takes up the onion he had been working on again and bends farther over to chop it fine once more.

Every soft tap of silverware against the table heightens his senses more, each whisper of movement deafening, and finally the click of bare feet against the floor enough to dizzy him in anticipation. Hannibal stills his knife for an instant as Will comes to stand behind him, his amusement almost tangible.

He waits until Hannibal sweeps the onions into the pan, sizzling, before grazing the back of his thigh with his knuckles. Hands against the counter and lips parted, Hannibal ducks his head but does not turn, the gentle touch sparking hot through every inch of his skin. Will follows with fingertips the soft skin where his ass curves to meet his legs, tickling upward with the barest brushing touch to his tailbone.

Hannibal can’t help it, he moans, a soft barely-heard thing. He leaves his lips parted and arches his back incrementally, enough to feel Will’s fingers press a little harder to his skin.

The omelette needs time to cook, all ingredients ready for it, just the egg left to be poured over top, the cheese to be sprinkled there. Hannibal considers his options, looks outside to see no sun even on the horizon yet to pull daylight over them, unwelcome. He smiles, shifts just a little, and bites his lip before letting his eyes close.

“Would you mind, awfully, pouring our omelette into the pan and letting it cook?” Hannibal asks. “I fear if I move too far I will lose the rather graceful position you have suddenly caught me in, and that would be inexcusable.”

“Stay.”

The whisper is so close to his shoulder that Hannibal can feel Will’s breath warm his skin. A shower of shivers erupts through him and his fingers curl, then spread against the counter, watching sidelong as Will steps aside to do as asked. He upturns the bowl of well-beaten eggs into the pan, setting it aside.

Though only a few steps away, Will takes his time returning, relishing the eagerness that presses Hannibal’s toes to the floor and raises his heels the moment he’s passed from his line of sight. Behind him again, Will stands, his stomach snaring tight as with a bare shift of movement, Hannibal presents his hips higher. Will draws a breath, holding it as their breakfast sizzles beside, and begins to mark each notch of Hannibal’s backbone with his fingertips.

Hannibal allows his heart to double the rhythm of Will’s touch. Lower, past his ribs, lower, following the sway in his spine that he brings to a beautiful bend, lower, lower…

“The eggs are going to burn,” Will murmurs, grinning.

“No,” Hannibal whispers, and a laugh catches his words. “Not if you turn the heat to its lowest.” He watches Will do it, just with one hand as the other continues its soft teasing. Hannibal can barely breathe, doesn’t think he even wants to anymore. He can feel himself harden between his legs, from this alone, from the anticipation of Will so near.

Oh, how he used to remember Will’s throaty growls against him when Will took him, words incomprehensible both for their foreign nature and because they were mumbled against Hannibal’s skin.

Oh, how he used to bring himself to shaking pleasure just thinking of it.

Hannibal swallows.

Lord, how near he is. How permanent, now.

His breath jerks from him in a wanton moan as Will’s fingers stiffen and slip between his cheeks, rubbing firm and claiming. Will presses his other hand to Hannibal’s chest to hold him upright, mouth open against his shoulder until his teeth close around soft skin and hard bone. Hannibal pushes back to better feel the jut of Will’s rigid cock, twitching in time with each steady stroke of fingers.

Hannibal’s heart skitters faster beneath Will’s hand as he leans into him, looping an arm around his neck.

“Insatiable,” Will whispers, a low, coarse purr of praise. “God, Hannibal, if you only knew the nights I have imagined having you again, just like this.”

Hannibal’s throat clicks as he swallows, fingers curling in soft chestnut hair as he arches his neck to lean his head against Will’s shoulder. Open to him entirely, welcoming the vulnerability this position gives him. He sets his feet just slightly wider apart and lets out a long breath as Will’s fingers curl soft against his chest.

“Tell me,” he asks.

“The way you splay your hands in front of you, bent with your cheek against the bed,” Will murmurs, and his words spill heat across Hannibal’s throat. “How you push yourself against me just like this, wanton, wanting more, as much as I can give you. My fingers, my tongue, my cock opening you, stretching your body wide and willing for me.”

He reaches between Hannibal’s legs and fists tightly around his cock. Hannibal’s breath hitches as Will teases a fingertip harder against his opening, not yet breaching him but bending the trembling muscle. The arm around Will’s neck tightens as Hannibal’s knees weaken and he groans.

“I want you to sit astride me - let me watch you display,” Will says, mouth pressed to Hannibal’s pulse. “I want to pin you to every wall in this house until you shake so hard you can hardly stand. My cock inside you, your tongue held out for me to show the result of your sucking, _Christ_ ,” Will groans. “Every possible way I have imagined, biting my hand to quiet my voice as the other worked fast between my legs. Every possible way, Hannibal, I want to have you. Again and again.”

Hannibal murmurs something, voice rough again, though it hitches to something higher as Will continues to touch him, playing with him and stroking him up higher. Breakfast sizzles near them, still cooking, still for a while longer until they can turn the stove off and Hannibal will bend, in any way Will asks him to, and take everything he gives him.

“I still can’t believe how hard I came when you ate me out,” Hannibal whispers, laughing, lips parting almost immediately on another groan as Will presses closer to him, strokes him more. “God, I thought I was going to collapse, I couldn’t breathe… your _tongue_ Will…”

Only with Will had Hannibal ever experienced and experimented this way, only with him did he find his pleasure so utterly satisfying. Hannibal thinks of how he had missed him, how he had pined for the beautiful brown-haired boy with a huge grin and bright eyes who had come and gone from his life as quickly as a passing breeze. He thinks of the man behind him now, remarkable in everything that he is.

“Anything,” he breathes. “Will, I will give you everything.”

“I know you will,” comes the soft whisper, as Will releases Hannibal’s cock to grasp his cheek instead. A gentle pressure is all it takes for Hannibal to turn and face him, feet spreading across the floor, legs parted and head back as Will reaches between Hannibal’s legs to stroke his hole again.

“You,” Will murmurs, leaning in as Hannibal ducks his head to meet his eyes again. Their lips touch but do not close, parted with shared breath between them. “You are everything to me, and so long as I have you -”

“You do,” laughs Hannibal. “You always have.”

He presses his palms to the edge of the counter behind him and turns his voice towards the ceiling. His fingers have never sufficed, not once have they come near the sensation that Will spreads through his body like an electrical fire. He aches to be filled and stretched, spent and exhausted, to feel Will’s calloused hands easing his shuddering to peace again after.

Their kiss closes smothering heat as Hannibal holds himself spread and shaking already. Neither will last long, not after so much time without, but they will wake again and stir again and join again and sleep again. But knowing that makes it all the sweeter when Will begins to relent his touch, pressing his palm to Hannibal’s inner thigh to feel the tension trembling within.

“Breakfast first,” Will murmurs against Hannibal’s mouth, grinning. “ _Déjeuner_.”

Hannibal groans, low and long, and spreads his lips in a wide grin.

“You terrible tease,” he curses softly, biting his lip before dropping his chin again and leaning in to kiss Will softly. “Cruel, awful man.”

“You love me.”

“Unendingly,” Hannibal agrees, grin wide, as he leans in for another kiss and hums when he’s denied. “Coffee, please, if you will. While I set the table and fix our plates.” He waits until Will turns to get the mugs and squeezes hard against one cheek of his ass as he passes him.

Lingering with a hand on a ceramic mug, Will drums his nails, once. Hannibal catches his eye, still scarlet-cheeked, and raises a brow.

“Coffee?”

“For breakfast,” Hannibal answers, fighting down a smile into a nearly convincing expression of extraordinary sobriety. “That we might stay awake, for longer.”

Will laughs, easily, and feeling the pull in his cheeks realizes just how long it’s been since he’s laughed with such ready pleasure as here. He isn’t without humor at the university, he has friends there and peers both with whom he enjoys spending time. But it is a part of himself that they know, and only that. Here it is the whole, and Will lifts a hand to his cheek to rub away the wonderful ache within.

“Coffee, then,” Will agrees, taking down one mug, and then two. “Perhaps, too, we might have accompaniment -”

“Oh?”

Hannibal’s feigned innocence, entirely unconvincing, is nearly enough to bring Will back against him again. Will takes in the length of the man, neatly turning over the near-burnt omelettes onto plates, and with delight realizes that both he and Will are both still erect.

“What we might have had with dinner, since this is somewhere in between,” Will tempts him, delighted to do so and for the first time in too many years be the cause of mischief, and not its cure. “Coffee to keep us awake, and spirits to intoxicate.” He sees Hannibal draw a breath and interjects, and they speak in tandem - _but I already am_.

A snort and Hannibal glances at him again, before straightening and watching Will, naked and glorious. Holding the pan aloft still, Hannibal draws his bottom lip between his teeth and lets it go again.

“Will you make us an Irish Coffee, Will?”

“Perhaps one with more Parisian tones.”

“By all means, the illicit substances you seek can be found in the class case in the hallway, freshly filled.”

“You anticipated this?”

“I remember who I’m dealing with.” Hannibal wrinkles his nose in pleasure and sets the pan down, taking up the plates instead. “Go, my lovely Will, corrupt us with everything this house has to offer. We have, after all, many walls to press against if your plan is to come to fruition.”

A brush against his bottom as Will passes by is nearly enough for Hannibal to drop the plates, his entire being still attuned to the only person who has ever overwhelmed it so entirely.

“Start the coffee, will you?” Will asks. “God, it’s a maze.”

“Yes, I will, and truly, it is not.”

Will’s fingers follow the wainscotting as he goes, taking in the grand expanse of house around him. “Tell me you’ll come visit Oxford with me, when we drag ourselves out of bed for long enough,” he calls back. “There’s going to be no one there during long vac so I can show you all the places in which I wrote to you. Once you see it you’ll understand -”

Will pauses, grimacing, as much from the stiffness in his leg as from the one between them both, as he crouches to examine the cabinet stocked flush with spirits.

“You’ll understand that this is a mansion compared to the quarters in which I’ve cloistered myself,” Will finishes. He finds the bottle of absinthe, its label a flourish of blue Belle Epoque lettering against a white field. The glass is green and already he can smell the anise seeped into the cork as he brings it near, breathing deep. “You’re going to have to make this, dearest, I haven’t the slightest inclination as to how.”

A clucking sound from the kitchen is all Will gets in answer as Hannibal takes their plates to the counter and sets the table for them right there. It will be easier, in the end, for them both to stand rather than sit, in the positions they find themselves in.

“It is a terrible mistake to allow someone of my disposition to make something so alcoholic. It will be potent.”

“Good.”

“Perhaps enough to render us impotent for a time.”

“Refrain,” Will laughs, turning to look down the corridor once more. Hannibal comes by as though summoned. Taking the bottle from Will to set aside, he takes next Will’s arm to help him stand. There is no pity in his expression, no anger or upset, Hannibal merely smiles at Will and kisses him again, soft and gentle on the lips.

“Simply because you asked me so nicely.”

Will keeps his arm laced through Hannibal’s as they walk, not by necessity but by desire to be so near, to feel himself supported without obligation by either. He understands the looks that fall to his cane when he takes it up; though the war did not damage most boys in his keeping, there is not one amongst them who does not have a friend, father, or brother who was a part of it. There is sympathy and there is guilt, there is discomfort, and Will begrudges them not at all for any combination of those emotions.

But there is a relief, profound, in knowing that Hannibal sees him only as who he truly is - not a casualty, not a don. Not anyone but Will. 

He sets his hands to the counter and frees Hannibal to his task, watching eagerly as he takes down glasses and produces a silver absinthe spoon in the shape of a leaf. It is a ritual that Will watched with fascination in the bar where they first met, a sugar cube set atop the spoon, a mingling of water that fogs the pale green liquid within its glass. Will studies the intricate movements, graceful fingers and effortlessly elegant turns of wrist, and as the scent of the drink hammers his heart against his ribs he reaches to catch Hannibal’s hand before he can turn away.

Will’s words fail him, where he would desperately beseech Hannibal to explain their luck, his own, to have such an extraordinary person as this be the keeper of his heart. As Hannibal regards him, both fond and curious, Will can only laugh and release him again, before taking his glass in hand.

“A toast,” he suggests, as Hannibal sets the spoon into the sink and returns. “To the most beautiful boy I have ever known, and ever will.”

Hannibal's eyes draw up in pleasure and he watches Will a moment more before accepting the toast and setting the glass to his lips. In Paris, they had taken shots of this awful stuff until they saw lights that were not there, heard songs that did not exist. But now, they sip it slowly, relishing the cooling burn of anise and the muddled herbs and sweetness.

Hannibal watches Will as though he cannot take his eyes off of him. And in truth, he cannot. Messy hair and sleepy eyes and beautiful strong build. Chest still smooth, unlike Hannibal's, the vee of his hips enticing and ridiculously tempting.

Soon.

Hannibal sets his glass down.

"An honor to serve breakfast to him," Hannibal says, eyes narrowing in mischief. "The most beautiful boy I have ever known, who bewitched me that day in an oversized uniform and cheeks pink with alcohol. You had freckles then."

"I still do," Will tells him, taking a sip of coffee to cleanse his palate before starting on breakfast, leaning over the counter to face Hannibal. "In the summer and the sun."

"I will have to start again, then," Hannibal laments. "Counting them one by one with kisses."

Will ducks his head, smiling, as he takes another bite of eggs. “Is that what you were doing?”

“I made good progress considering the short amount of time,” says Hannibal, watching Will eat for a moment before continuing to do so himself. “There were, of course, redundancies.”

“In what way?”

“One must always check their work, to ensure that their methods are thorough. I found myself doubting the consistency of my study just here,” he says, motioning along his cheek before a smile wrinkles the corners of his eyes. “And so I was forced to repeat my count there, again and again.”

They stand at ease, Will with one arm folded against the counter, slouched comfortably. Hannibal tall, across from him. Their ardor has temporarily softened, but Hannibal watches with keen attention as Will lowers a hand out of sight beneath the counter with a telltale tug, seemingly unintentional.

Seemingly.

His eyes narrow with pleasure.

“I endeavored to know every inch of you,” Hannibal says. “And I am a man of my word.”

“Thank God for that,” grins Will. “You’ll have to get me in the sun first, though, for the freckles to return, so it may be that your results are delayed considering how very little interest I have in leaving here any time soon.”

"There are many more inches of you to learn, dear Will," Hannibal tells him, smile coiling warm around his fork as he sets another mouthful of omelette between his lips.

It is pleasant, sharing breakfast this way again. Hannibal thinks of how lovely it had been to feed Will from his fingers as the young soldier sat astride him, speaking his strange language and laughing at things Hannibal could not understand but laughed at too.

God, he loves him.

"Don't," he chastens, amused, as Will’s fingers seek down once more. His eyes flick up to meet Will’s and he raises a brow, almost begging to be contested.

To the contrary, and Hannibal’s delight, Will’s eyes widen and he blinks. His cheeks pinken bright as he sets his hand back to the counter, an apology perched on parted lips. But then his eyes drift, hooding slowly as he takes Hannibal in, tracing the parts of Hannibal’s body not hidden by counter with the familiarity of fingers. It is enough in look alone that Hannibal suppresses a shiver, and lifts his chin, almost prim.

“It’s uncivilized,” Hannibal adds, attention focused on Will’s tongue, barely seen, pressing past his lips.

“And?”

“Uncouth.”

“And?”

“Barbaric,” sighs Hannibal, his own length hardening again beneath the intensity of Will’s gaze. Will doesn’t let his eyes stray as he finishes his breakfast and his coffee, and takes his glass of absinthe in hand. His smile curves crooked, entirely mischievous, as he sips it and sucks the bitter liqueur from his lips.

And with a tilt of his head, attention briefly turned to his own body before he raises his eyes again, Will lowers his hand beneath the counter once more. The shift of muscles in his arms and chest signals his languid stroke, tightening his voice to a rough warmth.

“And you love that too,” Will tells him. “Especially that. Nowhere near so refined as you - entirely the opposite - and entirely your fault. You make me vulgar, Hannibal. Your savage soldier, all civility and manners forgotten in favor of fucking you roughly into the sheets.”

Hannibal makes a sound, soft and needy, and resists the urge to stroke himself, too. The way Will stands, commanding in presence and body, glorious in his debauchery, Hannibal wants nothing more than to sink to his knees and take Will between his lips.

But the thought of having him between his legs instead is overwhelming.

"Beautiful and terrible at once," Hannibal confirms, biting his own lip before letting it go. The absinthe is swallowed in one long drink and the empty glass set to the counter. "You are a bad influence on me. I think I will leave the dishes ‘til morning."

“Good,” says Will, finishing his glass in kind. A final slow shift of his arm widens Hannibal’s pupils, entirely still as he watches Will stand back from the counter. “Bring the bottle.”

“It is untempered.”

“Fitting, I think,” Will responds, brow lifting. He grins triumphant when Hannibal takes the absinthe in hand, but quickly smooths his expression again. He recalls an incident in which they found relief without even touching the other, when upon returning from the privy Will discovered Hannibal on his knees, cheek against the bed, and his hand between his legs. Kneeling behind him, Will had stroked himself and watched, entranced by the wanton coiling beauty before him, until pressing close only to shudder his release against Hannibal’s ass.

“Go,” he says, clearing his throat and lifting his chin. “I want to watch you walk.”

Hannibal laughs, a warm and genuinely pleased sound, but decides to acquiesce. Drawing the bottle in a slow drag over the counter he lets it drop to his side and starts to slowly make his way back to the bedroom. He does not look back, knowing Will is watching, knowing he will follow at his own pace when he feels it right to.

Instead, on a whim, Hannibal brings the bottle to his lips and takes a slow pull from it, humming at the overpowering taste as he swings his hips and takes the doorframe with his other hand to gracefully turn himself into the bedroom.

Will follows with slower steps, and delights in every step of Hannibal’s lazy stride. The tilt of his bottom, the shift of muscle in his thighs, the lean lines of his calves down to the tight tendons of his heels. In every way, he is exquisite, and a greater intoxication Will has never known.

Lingering in the doorway where Hannibal stood, Will wonders at the sensations that Hannibal brings to immolation inside him. Near-predatory with want, pulse throbbing with desire, Will readily casts aside the well-honed stoicism of his life, as it were, without Hannibal. He feels wanton with lust, with love, with idolatry for the man who holds the bottle out to him.

Pushing from the frame to step forward, Will’s feet click against the wooden floor as he comes close enough to take the absinthe. He stands at the foot of the bed as Hannibal spreads his hands before him and draws up a knee, then the other, bent beautifully even before he curves his spine deeper and spreads his knees apart.

The slosh of liquor as Will takes a sip springs a shiver through Hannibal, who turns and sets his shoulders to the headboard as Will kneels slowly to the bed behind him.

“You are exquisite,” Hannibal whispers to him, smile barely touching his lips but warming his eyes enough to more than make up for it. He could praise Will forever, sing hymns to his beauty and his mind, memorize every bend and turn of elegant muscle. And he will. Now that they have forever, he will.

Hannibal watches Will set the bottle to the bedside table and shivers in anticipation of what’s to come. He shifts his legs a little wider, arches his back, makes another soft sound of pleasure having Will so near.

“I’ve missed this,” he admits. “These terrible illicit things we did together.”

“Every damnable day,” Will agrees, sinking against Hannibal’s body and joining their lips in a rough kiss. Noses bumping, their mouths part to allow their tongues to twist together between them. Firm bodies press flush together as Will rocks down against him, gasping softly before he laughs. “And more still every night.”

“God,” Hannibal groans, sharing his laugh. “Miserable night, with only memory to keep me warm.”

“Only?”

“And busy hands,” he grins, “that would not allow me sleep until they had their way. I tried to fill the space that you once did.” Will slows his ardent marking of Hannibal’s throat with kisses and lifts his head.

“Go on.”

“A poor substitute, though that hardly stopped me from attempting. Again and again…”

“Christ,” breathes Will. He watches Hannibal’s lips part in sympathy as he brings his fingers up into his own mouth, slicking them before sliding them low. A firm circle pressed between Hannibal’s legs arches him from the bed and Will kisses his chest, nuzzling thick hair. Breath stuttering, hitching short, Will’s voice cracks moaning as he slips the tip of a finger into the heat of Hannibal’s body, and feels it yield to him.

Hannibal’s entire body shudders, fingers curling around Will’s shoulders and sliding down his arms, holding him close this way as Will continues warming kisses to Hannibal’s skin. Reverent, adoring, so, so gentle as he works his finger into and out of Hannibal and the older man groans at the sensation. 

It was always this way, entirely disarming and so, so good, enough to turn Hannibal’s knees to water and his entire body to irregular gentle shudders of delight. He remembers Will’s first response to that, a brief panic that he was causing pain, before Hannibal had moaned and Will had succumbed to it, kissing him with a laugh to try and shut him up.

Hannibal’s hands seek up to Will’s hair again, tangling in it, tugging it enough to tilt Will’s head and pull a long sigh from him as his lips part and his eyes lift to Hannibal’s.

“Beautiful,” Hannibal whispers, smiling, tickling his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue before swallowing and adding, “another?”

Will swears, laughing, and kisses him as he presses in deeper and joins a second finger to the first. Hannibal’s voice alights from him, with a flicker of delicious pain from the rough stretch that quickly eases into bliss. He has always - nearly always, when not being insolent and demanding - asked so sweetly, whether or not Will knew the words. Begging for debauchery with virginal innocence, wide eyes and lips kissed pink, Will could never deny him and now can hardly hold himself at bay from giving him everything.

And why should he, really? When Hannibal’s thighs are clutched against him and his fingers cling pulling to his hair, when the heat and pressure of his body is almost unbearable in pulling Will’s pulse quicker. They kiss clumsy, suddenly frantic, and Will spreads his fingers as he pulls them free and Hannibal makes a fussy sound.

“More?” Will asks, breathless, and Hannibal rolls the length of his body, bucking, in answer. Will spits into his hand and grins when the sound flutters Hannibal’s eyes closed and he moans, and slicking himself he presses hard against Hannibal’s body, grasping the headboard to steady himself.

“Will.” Hannibal’s breath hitches and his eyes flutter closed as his lips part. He’s smiling, his cheeks pink already from just the anticipation of this and the lingering taste of anise against his tongue. The record no longer plays, needle clicking quietly, and that is familiar too. For a moment, Hannibal is entirely overcome with the sweetest nostalgia, the aching need to cry because happiness cannot possibly fit into his heart and not burst it.

He arches up to kiss Will, just beneath his jaw, lips working soft as he slips his arms around Will’s shoulders and sinks lower against him, legs spread. He turns his head as the stretch grows, biting his lip and releasing it with a sigh before pressing a soft laugh against Will’s cheek.

“God, you feel good.”

Will breathes a laugh, the sound quaking as he rocks his hips and presses further, deeply as he can. He fights the urge to duck his head, his gaze held on Hannibal’s aching pleasure writ stunning across his face. All at once, they are in Paris, six years younger, and they are in London, now. The fragrance of cigarettes lingers in the air, mingling heady with the scent of sex and sweat between them.

“And you,” Will whispers, bringing a hand to Hannibal’s jaw to turn their mouths together. Hannibal tightens his body from the arch of his neck to the curling of his toes and Will groans low as Hannibal clenches around him, a helpless _oh_ and a curse that brings a laugh from Hannibal.

Another kiss shortens their breath further still before Will leans back, a hand hooked beneath Hannibal’s knee to bend his leg up and hold him spread. He eases out slowly, so slow that Hannibal shakes from it, pleading for more in breathless French before the returning thrust splinters his voice to an exquisite animal sound.

There is no set rhythm, the two learning each other again around the restrictions of their bodies now. They shift and kiss, adjust and laugh, hands wandering and breaths hitching in pleasure. Hannibal curls his legs around Will and arches up against him, slapping a hand against his mouth when the moan that pulls from him is entirely helpless, and so _loud_.

“Christ, that,” Hannibal’s throat clicks. “That, there, again - Will, please…”

“Down,” Will tells him. “Let me hear you.” Hannibal keeps his hand across his mouth, delighted, and shakes his head. 

“No?” Will responds, with a laugh. Hannibal’s eyes brighten and he holds tighter over his lips despite a startled noise as Will sits to his knees, still buried inside him, and in steady tugs, drags Hannibal down from the headboard to the center of the bed. Sides heaving, Will shakes his head this time, brows lifting. “Down, Hannibal, or I will make you.”

He can see the grin despite Hannibal’s mouth being hidden, and with a hum of disapproval, Will takes his free hand and holds it above his head. Hannibal laughs, he protests with a whimper, but neither are enough to stop Will from catching his wrist to free his voice, and pinning both hands above his head.

“Insolent, spoiled peacock,” Will sighs, holding Hannibal down as he curls his hips to fuck deeply again. A turn of hips brings the head of his cock stroking stiff against the spot inside Hannibal that makes him moan, and when he does, Will rewards him with the flat of his hand across Hannibal’s ass.

Hannibal curses, something in a rougher language than French, throatier than English, and arches his head back as he loses himself to the pleasure Will gives him. He moans when he wants to moan, laughs when his body responds enough to, he twists his wrists against Will’s hand as much to relish the pressure of his fingers as the spank that comes with it as a reminder to stay still.

And stay down.

“Yours, now, to deal with,” Hannibal reminds him, another moan catching the end of his words as he curls his lips together and then parts them again, tilting his head as he seeks a kiss.

Will yields it to him. Of course he does, he could never not. Not in all their teasing, Hannibal allowing Will to overpower him, Will relishing the ability to do so - not with blindfolds or spankings or any other manner of debauchery between them, could Will ever deny Hannibal the kisses he seeks as a drowning man seeks air. Laying heavy against him, the long tangle of their lips provides sweet counterpoint to their rough joining. Faster, deeper, rocking the bed beneath them, Hannibal does not try to meet Will’s rhythm but only allows it, hooking his ankles together to keep Will inside.

“My only,” Will whispers, words cracking hot as embers as he buries his face against Hannibal’s throat. Thrusting unsteady, his body coiling tense, he releases Hannibal’s wrists only enough to turn their palms together and lace their fingers, holding hands as his orgasm stiffens with a snap through his body and he groans long against Hannibal’s shoulder, trembling.

Hannibal just squeezes their fingers together tighter, panting against Will’s hair as he feels the man fill him, again, after so long. It is the best kind of familiar, and Hannibal frees one hand to stroke Will’s hair from his face, pulling the curls straight before letting them settle. He arches up, as Will keeps moving against him, and closes his eyes, letting his voice pull from him again and again as his own pleasure takes him.

They shiver, exerted and exhausted once more by each other, movements slow and languid and lazy, now. Hannibal brings Will’s hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles, down his fingers, over his fingertips, humming warm when Will spreads his fingers to touch against his lips and press past them for a gentle suck.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells him.

Will’s motions, aftershocks of their exquisite sundering, finally still. He does not yet withdraw himself, not in any way, instead settling heavy against Hannibal’s chest, forehead tucked against his jaw. He can hear the slowing of Hannibal’s pulse, the steadying of his heart, and a more faithful timepiece Will has never known than this. In every breath is an equal measure of devotion, in every beat a magnitude of adoration.

Will can only hope to meet the expectations of Hannibal’s love for him, and his heart swells with the knowledge that they share a lifetime more in which he will daily attempt to surpass it.

“I lived for you then,” Will whispers, raising a hand to frame Hannibal’s cheek, stroking soft skin beneath his thumb. “Every day as the fighting worsened and it became harder to compel myself forward, every day that death left his footprints in the mud around us. I reminded myself with every gun unjammed that what I did was not for Queen and country, but to keep war from your doorstep. I reminded myself with every engine brought back to working order that it was you I was protecting. And I touched the kerchief you gave me and at night brought it to my lips to promise you, as if - as if through that fabric you might hear my words, that I would find you again.”

Hannibal’s throat clicks, and Will shifts to the pillow, working his body free to lay alongside and drown himself in the boundless depths of Hannibal’s eyes.

“I lived for you then, and I will now, too,” Will says, smiling softly as he nuzzles near and brushes his thumb beneath Hannibal’s eye. “I love you, Hannibal. I could never want for more than this.”

Hannibal turns to him, one arm heavy over Will to hold him close, and presses their noses softly together.

“I will do everything in my power to make sure you never want for anything again,” he promises, smiling a little when Will makes a sound. He moves his hand to stroke damp hair from his forehead, leans back enough to see wide blue eyes watching him, adoring. Hannibal cannot imagine the terror of the front, he was never there. But the knowledge that the very thought of him kept Will working, kept him going and alive and strong… that is enough.

That is everything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There is no sound within, for long enough that Hannibal raises his hand once more to knock again, and then they hear him. A deep put-upon sigh, a quiet mumble about being disturbed even here, and then the door is opened by a tall man with silver streaking through his heavy curls, eyes wide and brows up in question. Hannibal finds that his smile is impossible to contain._
> 
> _“Anthony Dimmond,” he says. “You look atrocious.”_

_Cambridge, 1922_

Predictably, they don’t find him at the college.

Having taken the train from Oxford to Cambridge, they had found lodgings near the university, close enough that a cab would hardly be necessary should they wish to explore the town. But of course, with the man they seek not in his office, and apparently content to mark his papers and work on his own poetry from home, they seek out to find him there.

The walk is pleasant, fall just setting in and painting the leaves in every shade of gold and red. Will wraps his scarf tighter around his neck and flexes gloved fingers against his cane. Hannibal just gives him a brief sidelong look and tempers his smile.

The house they find, following the carefully handwritten instructions of the young girl at the front desk of his College, is comfortably large, and beautifully appointed on the outside. Within, both can only imagine. There is a pause, a gamble, almost, in whether or not they should stir this part of history when it has been so long left settled, but something tugs, a curiosity, a genuine desire to know, and so Hannibal takes the steps to the front door and knocks.

There is no sound within, for long enough that Hannibal raises his hand once more to knock again, and then they hear him. A deep put-upon sigh, a quiet mumble about being disturbed even here, and then the door is opened by a tall man with silver streaking through his heavy curls, eyes wide and brows up in question. Hannibal finds that his smile is impossible to contain.

“Anthony Dimmond,” he says. “You look atrocious.”

A breath of genuine surprise, not strong enough to be a laugh, finds Anthony’s smile suddenly wide and just as crooked as it’s always been. He slings his arms around Hannibal’s shoulders, a kiss against his cheek, and presses his laugh there.

“You absolute wretch, when did you bother learning to speak -” But his teasing cuts short as he looks beside Hannibal, just behind, and shakes his head, eyes softening. “Oh, God.”

Will offers him a small smile, nose wrinkling. “Not in Cambridge, He’s not.”

“Bloody hell,” Anthony sighs, holding Hannibal gently by the shoulders as he turns to look at him, brows up in disbelief. “You actually found him.”

“I found him,” Will corrects, taking the stairs slowly with his limp, to stand beside Hannibal and tilt his head at Anthony. “A lucky happenstance of a misdirected letter and a polite, albeit sassy, response.”

Anthony just watches, the way Will walks, the way his hair curls, no longer cropped to be army standard, the way his eyes wrinkle at the corners when he smiles. Just five years apart, and all of them are here. Most of them. None of Anthony’s letters to Franklyn have had a reply, and he isn’t sure where else to send them. Tobias wound up in Italy, studying under - and laying under - a luthier.

“You look good.”

“I’ve always looked good,” Will points out, and with a snort, Anthony turns enough to pull him into an embrace as well, tight and comfortable, pressing a deliberately exaggerated kiss to his cheek. Will wraps his free arm around him, gloved hand gripping firm against Anthony’s jacket, showy eggplant-colored velvet. He holds him tight enough to hide his tremor, laughing gently. “Thank you,” Will says softly, scarce above a whisper, “for taking care of him for me.”

“Thank you for not getting yourself blown up,” Anthony replies, somehow - always - teasing and genuine all at once. “Does that mean I’m off-duty now? Thank God for that.”

He watches the look shared between Will and Hannibal, gazes touching and cheeks warming before they look away again. It’s answer enough, and with a heavy sigh, Anthony decides, “I think this calls for champagne.”

“Lush,” Hannibal murmurs, following as Anthony turns to go inside the house, and holding the door open for Will to pass through in turn. “It’s hardly past noon.”

“Already so late? You see now how very dull I’ve become, though I’m clearly not the only one. I can remedy our sobriety, Hannibal, but I can’t fix that suit. Black? Did you think me dead and this my funeral? Morbid, darling, very morbid.”

With the door closed and seemingly no one but Anthony within the tidy, tall little house, Will reaches for Hannibal to squeeze his hand, laughing against his palm. It’s wonderful. All of this, to be together again, some part of their little band, scattered and lost to the winds time and distance.

He can hardly bear the joy that swells in him, leaning heavier on his cane to steady himself as he murmurs, “I’ve never been so happy to be home again.”

Hannibal buries his nose in Will’s hair and breathes him in. “Neither have I,” he admits. Years since he has seen any of his friends from Paris, not for lack of trying. Anthony and he had written religiously for a time, and then sporadically but just as determinedly. With Franklyn, they had both lost touch quickly. He had decided to return home to Greece and had not written since. Tobias had stopped writing as well, but Hannibal could only assume it was for a much more pleasant distraction than destruction.

They follow Anthony to the sitting room, outfitted in beautiful leather couches and dark polished wood. A mohair blanket rests scrunched at the foot of one couch, the dent in it suggestion that this was where Anthony had been pulled from when they called on him.

“One can hardly be an attending physician dressed as I used to prefer.”

“I would think it would bolster the mood of patients, honestly,” Anthony replies, waving from the kitchen for them to take a seat wherever they wished. “Or give a few headaches with the mingling patterns. I see your point, but I hardly accept it.”

“And you?” Hannibal asks. “One assumes then that you’re attiring yourself as garishly as you always have.”

“You must be mad, they’d drag me out and hang me,” Anthony snorts. The cork pops free with a hiss and he returns with three glasses and the bottle, laying them out and affecting his most professorial voice. “No, no, it’s all very dignified here at King’s College. One must seek to draw attention to themselves only for their mind and their achievements, not for their particularly astute taste in lime-green paisley kerchiefs or red velveteen tailcoats.”

He pours for Will first, letting his attention rest on him a moment more.

“Mostly whole?” he asks, and Will understands the question to its core. They have all seen men damaged far deeper than scars, carrying on their persons gaping wounds that none can see. He nods, his smile small but genuine.

“Mostly,” Will agrees. “Whole enough, and filling in the parts that aren’t,” he adds, settling to the couch beside Hannibal and resting his cane aside.

“And your friends? The ones we stumbled upon,” Anthony says, pouring Hannibal a glass which he then retracts playfully as Hannibal reaches for it.

Will blinks, and takes a small sip of the champagne. “Confirmed bachelors and still very dear friends,” he smiles, “who share a house together just outside of Manchester.”

Anthony laughs, one loud sharp note and pours himself a glass as well before returning to the couch he had occupied before.

“Good for them. The confirmed bachelor life is one of the greatest things on earth.”

“I disagree.”

“You’re hopeless,” Anthony tells Hannibal, taking a sip of his champagne. “And also unfathomably lucky. Look at you two. It’s like no time has passed at all.” He’s quiet a moment, just watching them. They are all young, still, barely older than the boys they lecture at their respective universities and hospitals. But time and age seem to have little meaning to them, now. Any of them.

“How?” Anthony asks finally. “How, in all pluperfect hell?”

Hannibal’s eyes draw up, his smile easing the corners as he looks to Will, who looks to him in turn. The intimacy of even a glance crackles static sparks between them and they laugh softly.

“I told him I would find him,” Hannibal says. “In English.”

“That isn’t the same as having found each other in England.”

“I came back after the war,” Will says. “Not long after Armistice, spring - summer. No one was at the house and I still didn’t speak French, so I had to motion to the woman there who I was looking for.”

“Oh dear,” Anthony sighs.

“You’d all gone and so I came home, finished my papers at Hertford and stayed,” Will says. “And a letter intended for another doctor entirely was purloined -”

“I did nothing of the sort,” Hannibal insists, mildly affronted.

“And here we are,” Will grins. “Somehow, still, and now with you.”

Anthony listens, looks between them both and laughs, warm, comfortable, almost exhausted, though not by their company. It is so familiar, almost as though at any moment there will be sounds of the market through the window, the smell of cooking mingling with fresh flowers and old paper.

“We all split up fairly soon after your company left.” Anthony says, taking another drink of champagne and settling in. “Hannibal left first, determined to be a field surgeon though I told him he would not find you on the front. We kept in touch, I told him if he didn’t write me I would kill him myself.”

“I wrote.”

“And you’re still alive,” Anthony points out with a grin.

“And you?” Will asks him. “Tobias? Franklyn?”

“Franklyn tried for home,” Anthony says. “Went back to Greece, or attempted. He’s not written since and… one can hope, I suppose, but if he has found his kin and is happy in his silence, I’ll forgive him that.”

“And Tobias?” Hannibal asks, sipping his champagne, a movement now incongruous with the time that seems to overlay their own, when he’d have laughed at a glass and had the drink poured directly into his mouth from the bottle.

“Last I saw him, he told me that he had seen every article of my clothing, in every combination, upon my person and all our furniture, and that he was moving on,” Anthony snorts. “We took up again when it was only us, but we’re both far too fussy to stand the other for anything more than bitching and sex.”

Will’s cheeks burn hot before he can stop it, a sensation all too _now_ rather than then. Or maybe he’s always been this way, truly, something about which he has often wondered in the intervening years. Would he truly have settled there with them, in the wild and dissonant rhythms of their life? Or has he always been meant for places quieter than that, despite his desire to have once been a part of something more?

“He’s in Italy now,” Anthony adds. “Stringing up instruments with a luthier.”

“I’m sure it’s entirely professional.”

Anthony snorts.

“And you?” Will prompts him, as Anthony turns a lifted brow to him, his smile challenging, always that, a cat with the canary still singing from between its teeth. He is devilishly handsome, unfairly charming. For all of minutes upon their meeting, Will had resolved to not like him at all - and again when he discovered his alma mater - but to do so proved impossible then, as it does now. Despite Anthony’s every affectation and endeavor, he is kind and warm-spirited.

Will has missed him very much.

“I couldn’t exactly stay haunting about that house by myself,” Anthony says, a jest curling his tone only weakly before it falls flat. “I began to hate it. No amount of new acquaintances or lovers could occupy it properly. It felt as though it echoed, hollow, still carrying in it all the years before, and every one of them that I brought in infuriated me after a time. I resented their insolence in thinking they would be apt replacements, though of course they had no idea that they’d ever thought such a thing. And so I could have stayed and drank myself ruddy-cheeked and fat, or -”

“Returned to Cambridge.”

“And done essentially the same, but cheerfully, rather than in misery,” Anthony smiles, lifting his glass. “And I’m not fat.”

“No,” Will agrees with a small laugh.

“Not yet,” teases Hannibal, and Will presses an elbow into his side, drawing a fond look and a little smile.

Anthony draws a breath, not caring to hide that he watches them so closely from across the armchair facing them - he’s heard and seen far more of them both, after all. But he shakes his head a little, thumb against his teeth.

“I feel as though I’m watching ghosts,” he says softly. “A seance, of sorts, but not at all terrifying. Rather that the spirits before me have settled into a greater plane, and I trapped in mine can only watch their peace in wonder. How lucky - how very, very lucky you are.”

Will ducks his head and smiles, just something small, something warm, and then lifts his eyes to Hannibal again. How often they had ached for the other, thought the other gone, thought the other happy with someone else. And then…

And then.

“I’ve missed you,” Will tells Anthony, and the other waves it off, though his own smile is sincere. “Always thought that you would get through the war unscathed. I’m glad I was right.”

“Didn’t see the front,” Anthony agrees, “but I saw enough. We were intercepting messages, translating them, finding new coordinates. Back and forth and back and forth, French and German and some languages I thankfully didn’t have to transcribe, they sounded ghastly.”

“You enlisted?”

“As close as, I suppose, I could have ever come to,” Anthony allows, gesturing casually with his hand. “I couldn’t sit back and do nothing once you had gone, once Hannibal had pushed himself through his studies only to end up leaving the safety net of them to go to war.” Anthony drains his glass and leans for the bottle again, offering a top up to the others. Will accepts, Hannibal doesn’t. “I have no bloody skill in strength or stealth or engineering, but I have six languages up my sleeve and that was enough for them.”

“Couldn’t have done what we did without you,” Will tells him, a crease in his brow that eases when he smiles again.

“I always did love giving boys instructions,” muses Anthony, as ebullient in his flippancy as he always has been, but with a newfound gentleness that - damn him - makes more charming still. The kind words are appreciated, Will knows, and those who weren’t in the war but idolize the soldier know little of how many men and women - just as valiant - gave them the capability to take up their guns and survive another day.

A quick nod from the poet to the doctor, and Will’s brow lifts.

“They’ve gotten to you,” Anthony says.

“Whom?”

“The English. Are you a teetotaler now? _You mustn’t believe them when they tell you that they only have a sip of sherry before a meal and a nip of port after, a greater nation of drunkards I’ve never known_ ,” he says, and the curl of French, a throatful purr, forces Will to set his hand to his mouth to resist a laugh of absolute delight. The house is gone - well, there, but not the home it was before. Members of their little family are away for time indefinite.

But in this, cheerful banter between men and languages, it feels like as much a home as Will has ever known.

“ _Endeavoring to make myself a better man_ ,” Hannibal responds, chin uptilted and expression sly.

“He’s trying to be a good Christian husband,” stage-whispers Anthony to Will, whose lips part in surprise before he grins and lets himself ease against the arm of the couch, cheek on his knuckles.

“Not too good, I hope.”

Anthony just smiles. " _Hasn't learned French in all this time? More's the pity. Does he know the things you said to him in the throes of passion_?"

Hannibal just laughs, shaking his head, finally finishing his glass of champagne as though it is the tariff needed to keep Anthony quiet on the subject.

"Atta boy. You used to be able to drink me under a table after screwing me over it, now look at you. All domestic."

Will just turns a fond look to his friend - his partner, his life - and bites his lip. There is a strange lack of jealousy between them, perhaps because of how open they had all been around Will, about who they had slept with, who they enjoyed, who they would happily do again. He knows well enough that despite past history, Hannibal's devotion is true, his love entirely genuine.

Will loves him.

And hell if Anthony hasn't grown more handsome with laugh lines and prematurely greying hair.

"You're jealous," Will says casually instead. "Too afraid to anchor your own boat to anyone's shore."

“Darling boy, my little boat was sunk long ago, and I’ve been happily and unhappily - in varying degrees - treading water ever since. You’ve seen what happens when you let yourself go like that,” he says, inclining his head towards Hannibal, but with a glimmer of amusement in the corners of his eyes.

“I was,” Hannibal begins, before adding with a soft laugh, “distraught, when you left.”

Though it feels, indeed, lifetimes ago, Will’s heart sweetly sunders at the thought of it. His beautiful Hannibal, seeing him off with such bravery, and then -

Will slides his hand beneath Hannibal’s and folds their fingers together.

“You were going to build him a widow’s walk,” Will asks Anthony, who grins bright.

“When the booze didn’t work, when cuddling didn’t, when we began to run out of anymore dishes and he’d bruised me to a beautiful bloom of violet beneath my eye for trying to stop him running out, one finds new methods,” he says, no rancor in his tone as he offers Hannibal a wry smile. “Teasing often serves to highlight the absurdity of extremes.”

“And then I went anyway,” grins Hannibal. It’s easy now, so easy, with the three here and intact. What would have felt unconscionable to joke about with one missing now flows smooth as the incandescent bubbles down their tongues. “Are you seeing anyone at all?”

Anthony shrugs, the gesture relaxed, comfortable. "I see, I look," he says. "Sometimes those who look back decide to follow me home. But I'm not in the habit of collecting strays."

"We need to find him someone," Will muses, so comfortable, so happy here.

"I'm afraid that after you took the last good man on earth, I find others wanting. I am contented to delight myself with passing whims."

Hannibal snorts, and Will squeezes his hand tighter. He thinks of ridiculously early Parisian mornings and the smell of freesias that lingered everywhere. He thinks of the letters he had started to keep folded, safe, in an ornate wooden box at home. He thinks of Anthony singing, surprisingly well, that evening on the roof, and starting up a duet with an elderly Italian who was passing by below. 

These unlikely friends of his, his own from school who had followed him to the company... how lucky, how truly lucky he is.

"Are you back at the Other Place, then?" Anthony asks Will, and he nods, smile and blush both lifted by the sweet champagne. Anthony's eyes narrow in pleasure. "And him only as far as London, and neither of you the wiser. He came here for you. Better for him, really, far too old to be in Paris now - like one of the geezers we used to laugh about back at Claire de Lune."

It isn't hard to see why Hannibal was - is - so taken with the poet. Will feels much the same, in truth, but without the desire to fuel it. Anthony is devastatingly intelligent, tremendously charming. Strikingly handsome - especially now with smudges of grey among his dark curls where the war took its toll - and unapologetically wanton. Will imagines that he and Hannibal shared all manner of debauchery together, and the thought springs no jealousy in him, so much as a bit of deviant curiosity. They must have been beautiful together, bright young things draped dark-eyed and sultry around the other's shoulders.

The last two great men on earth, Will wagers, and one with whom he has traded keeping of the other's heart.

"I'm right here," Hannibal interjects, amused. "And I'm not yet thirty."

"Age is merely a number. Will you two be living together, then?"

Will draws a breath, watching as Hannibal refills his glass with an encouraging smile. Their gaze holds, a moment only but still flush with a gentle sort of wonder that they can at all consider such a question, that they are here with their friend to be asked such a thing. Will mutes his smile behind a sip of champagne and sucks it from his bottom lip.

"We thought we might travel."

"Or reside in Oxford," Hannibal allows. "If the University seeks another fellow for the Faculty of Medicine."

Anthony grins. "Traitor."

"And travel during vac," Will says, but it's more of a question, heart skipping quickly. "We could."

"You've not stopped shagging long enough to even talk about it, have you? Typical," Anthony laughs, as he slips further sideways into his chair, long legs bent across one arm and an elbow hooked around the other. "Good to know that hasn't changed, at least."

Hannibal just makes a sound, a hum of pleased consideration, and narrows his eyes at Anthony as Will laughs. It is so silly, and it's true. They had spent days in bed together, touching and kissing and learning each other all over again. They talked, but of the past, not yet the future.

"We would like to travel," Hannibal agrees. "Take the summer months and enjoy them properly. This time, though, I think we have opted to stay home."

"In Oxford?"

"In London, at the moment," Will says. "Though..."

"We are looking at flats in Oxford once the students return and drag their wayward tutor with them."

Anthony’s brows lift. Will’s do too, in mirrored surprise. He at least manages another little laugh, always a bit more shy than the rest and still so now.

“Is that so?” Will asks, eyes drawing narrow as he smiles against the rim of his glass. He places his teeth against it, then releases, as if in concern that the quickening thrum of his heart might do him injury.

“I could not imagine taking Will from - from the Other Place,” Hannibal says, as Anthony inclines his head deeply in appreciation for this allowance, his smile still wide. “My own career is flexible, Will’s is tied to location.”

“He’s happy there.”

“Yes.”

“And you wish to ensure his happiness.”

“To the best of my ability,” Hannibal says. “And by whatever means.”

“I’m right here,” laughs Will, already dizzy with champagne and drunk with conversation. He sets his empty glass aside and presses his foot beneath Hannibal’s thighs, leaning back against the arm of the couch. His crippled leg remains low but he doesn’t resist when Hannibal sets a hand to his thigh, and finding only ease in Will’s muscles, Hannibal lifts it alongside its kin. Will stuffs this foot too beneath Hannibal’s leg and sighs his gentle relief, at him, at them, at this and all the promise that now blooms brightly before them. “Oxford, then.”

“I’ll never come to visit,” Anthony promises. “Not once.”

“However then would you find new means to make mockery of it?” Will asks, teasing. “Or witness the transformation of Hannibal Lecter from debauched dilettante into a productive member of the community? Surely you must be as fascinated - and shocked - by it as I.”

"You are a temptation, Will Graham, truly," Anthony chastens him. "Always have been, apparently. You know just which buttons to push." A long, put-upon sigh and Anthony sets his glass - empty - to the table before them once more. "I suppose I shall have to come. Once. To see the place and loathe it."

"Oh good, we'll make sure to have a sofa for you," Hannibal replies, eyes narrowed in soft delight as he works his fingers gently against Will’s leg. "The rest of the time, perhaps, we will spend here. Encroaching upon your hospitality and wearing out our welcome."

"Perfect, it's decided." Anthony claps his hands and swings his feet to the floor with a sigh. When he stands he adjusts his clothes with a flourish and flounces by them both. "Dinner, then? Shall we find somewhere prohibitively expensive or allow Hannibal to woo us both with his culinary prowess again?"

“It seems unfair of you to chastise Will for not yet learning French -”

“Yet?” Will asks.

“- if you’ve not yet learned to cook,” Hannibal finishes. Anthony’s eyes bely a mortal offense and he reels himself back in slow steps to stand tall and lanky before Hannibal.

“ _Says you, who shows up on my doorstep unannounced with an Oxfordian -_ ”

“I understood that bit,” adds Will, grin widening.

“ _\- presuming I’ve no important things to attend other than putting you up for an entire night. Two nights. Potentially three._ ”

“ _Two nights_?” Hannibal asks. “ _That is rather an imposition_.”

“ _And so you will cook for us, then, and earn your keep._ ”

“ _Some manner of treating guests_.”

“ _You are hardly that. You are akin to a drunken uncle who both irritates and bewilders - almost charming - all at once_.”

“ _I am concerned then for the relationships you kept with your uncles_ ,” Hannibal responds mildly, as Anthony grasps his cheeks in his hands and touches kisses to cheek, to other cheek, and to lips, lingering for only a moment.

“ _I adore you_ ,” Anthony tells him. “ _Please, you and your tragically educated husband, please stay_.”

“ _I’d nearly think you’ve missed us_ ,” Hannibal smiles, setting a hand over Anthony’s and accepting another chaste kiss. “I will happily oblige in ensuring you are both fed, then, on more than only champagne.”

Will can only watch the interplay, swift French and grand gestures that would seem furious to anyone watching who did not know them well. But he does, he is blessed to know them, and though he’s no idea what they’re on about, his heartbeat quickens in a way he’s not felt since Paris. Swept away in a torrent of language and warm affection, grasping to Hannibal and letting himself be taken, but now with the added promise of future. Will would go - anywhere, everywhere, of course he would - but to imagine Hannibal alongside him there, particularly there, at the end of a long day, to ride bikes with him through the city, to do things so mundane as arranging furniture -

“Look at him, he’s gone all moony-eyed,” Anthony whispers, the English enough to draw Will’s attention back to them, toes curling under Hannibal’s leg as he smiles.

“Wondering as to the inherent rudeness of the French,” Will murmurs, before Anthony’s hand sets against his cheek as well. He, too, is kissed, both cheeks and then his brow, a thumb stroking beneath his eye.

“Of which neither of us are.”

“Worse, then, that you take such pains to effect it,” Will grins, closing his eyes as a little kiss is touched to his lips in turn. His cheeks warm but he doesn’t fight it, he couldn’t then or now, instead settling to a relaxation that he has not felt for years, warm and open affection shared by all.

“And if I don’t hear you two breaking down the floorboards in the room above me tonight, I’m going to be enormously unhappy,” Anthony points out, before continuing to the kitchen. “It will be the best sleep I’ve had in years to hear you two rutting again.”

“Are we staying tonight?” Will laughs, humming a little sound of surprise as Hannibal leans across and kisses him softly, smiling, before standing to follow Anthony.

"Indefinitely, if I could have my way, but tonight will suffice," Anthony calls from the kitchen. Will laughs, resting against the couch entirely, now, that Hannibal has vacated it. He lets his head drop back over the arm and watches the house upside down. Just in his peripheral, he can see Anthony and Hannibal moving about the kitchen.

He wonders how his life could have so happily turned, after so many terrible events. The war, loneliness, the thought that he would forever be alone with his desires, unwanted and unloved, cloistered, eventually, away in a marriage he did not want. And now... these men, this home, this life...

"Can I help?"

Anthony makes a sound and walks back into Will’s line of sight.

"Sweet boy. As if you don't know how much you've helped already, with everything you are." A kiss to his forehead, then, a nuzzle and a gentle tug to his hair and Will is released once more. "No, darling, you rest. Finish up the bottle, if you wish, and I will get to live out my fantasy of serving you for a change."

"That's a fantasy?" Will laughs.

"Clueless. Adorably, remarkably clueless you are. Is he always like this?"

"Always," Hannibal confirms.

“You’re both terrible,” Will purrs, and when neither deny it, he lets his eyes slip closed. The soft back and forth of French, the clink and clank of utensils and dishware - despite the chill of autumn in the air it may as well be summer in Paris, 1916.

No.

Better than.

Because here there is no threat of war, no promise of deployment or desertion upon threat of death. Here he doesn’t have to choose. Here there is no end to what lies before them, and no fear of what the future will bring. There are friends and there is fondness; there is freedom the likes of which Will has only once before known and had given up ever finding again.

There is a home here, and a home in London, and there will soon - it seems - be a home for them in Oxford. Together, always together. The thought forces Will to sit upright, arms folded across his middle as if it might stop all the welling heat within him from spilling out from him all at once. He bites his lip watching them work together, pressing a laugh back beneath his hand as Hannibal swats Anthony with a towel.

How lucky they are.

How very, very lucky.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " _I was angry. Yes. I was left bereft that after so long you would go, just so. The loneliness, Hannibal, God - you know it well enough not to need my failing words for it_ ,” Anthony snorts. “ _It was altogether what I’d known would happen since the moment you met but_ -”
> 
> “ _But_?”
> 
> “ _But hope is a far thornier weed than the little blossoms poets use to describe it_ ,” Anthony says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Before the door latch has yet to close, Hannibal is pulled body to body, mouth to mouth against Will instead. They stagger back and Will's hands find Hannibal's hair, cane clattering unminded to the floor. The bed comes up quick and Hannibal can do no more than spread his arms and let himself be pushed back onto it. Arms spread, the room spins and he laughs.

Their fare for the evening was three bottles of wine, two of champagne, beef au jus and roasted root vegetables, but it was the company that sated them. Around and around, round after round, they teased each other and shared conversation. They exchanged affectionate touches and warm passing kisses. They nearly made it until dawn, until Anthony grandly declared a brief reprieve and had not returned. A knock on his door was met with a rude remark, and so they too decided to retire.

Will drags one leg up over Hannibal's thighs, the other spreading across his hip. The deliberation of his movements curls tight pleasure in Hannibal and unravels into goosebumps when Will jerks loose his tie in one rough pull.

“I cannot help but feel a sudden kinship to beasts of prey, alerted by the keen knowledge of a predator's imminent lunge.”

“That's hardly how spouses should speak to each other,” Will chastens him, ducking his head to begin suckling a mark against Hannibal's pulse. Arching, Hannibal sets his teeth to his bottom lip to mute his moan until Will relents.

“Remind me to thank Anthony for our unexpected marriage.”

Will pops loose the button at Hannibal's collar. “I asked you once, you know. In a manner of speaking,” Will smiles, brow lifting as Hannibal blinks surprise. “Oh yes. Had you been a woman I'd have done it right in Montmartre.”

It isn't an unhappy thing to say now, whereas before the frustration of not being able to get Hannibal to England in that manner – away from the war if nothing else – had for so many years been yet another quiet agony among so many. Hannibal tries to quiet his voice again when Will's fingers curl into his bare chest, but a kiss keeps his mouth open and their voices join amidst the twining of tongues. Will straddles him firmly, astride Hannibal's thighs, forcing his shirt back from his shoulders as he leans to kiss the warm muscles quivering there.

“We're going to get to live together,” Will whispers, as the predator begins to give way to a giddy disbelief and he laughs, snorting drunken delight.

Hannibal hums, feigning displeasure at the thought, and lays still as Will kisses sloppy against him. His heart beats quick, from the company, from Will so close, from knowing that they are all in the same place once more, together. There is a strange comfort in that, a reminder of how in Paris, before they had found the house, the four of them had slept as puppies in Anthony’s bed - the largest - in a single room below a couple who fought constantly.

Now they are above Anthony who is most likely in a drunken stupor and out cold, and they are near-vibrating with the thought that they have this, now, forever.

“You will have to allow me my decorative freedom,” Hannibal points out, freeing one hand from his sleeve and slipping it through Will’s hair. “I refuse to adhere to British stoicism when it comes to home decorating. We need to live in a place that feels lived in.”

Will squints, planting his hands against Hannibal’s bare chest, flushed hot, as he sits upright. “And by lived in you mean dizzying in textures and fabrics, colors and patterns.”

“Entirely so.”

Another snorted laugh breaks free as Will ducks his head, and begins to work open his own shirt, lifting only his eyes to watch Hannibal’s shoulders work to remove his shirt entirely.

“Agreed,” Will says. “I’ve no sense for it anyway, you’ll see that when I take you to Hertford. A blessing in that I’ve never had to find my own furniture.” Hannibal’s hands spread wide across his back as Will shrugs loose of his shirt. “Your decor only applies to the internal of our home, though. We must keep up appearances after all.”

He leans low, hips rocking in gentle rutting thrusts against Hannibal beneath as he drapes a kiss against his cheek. The words _our home_ resonate, something they never thought they’d hear the other say let alone to share. It brings their bodies tightly together, fumbling with pants inasmuch as they can shove them from the other’s hips without putting any distance at all between them.

“I’ll need somewhere to keep my fishing equipment, though,” Will whispers against Hannibal’s throat, almost passively, before attempting to distract Hannibal with fingers folded around his cock, trapped in the tight confines of his trousers.

“Fishing?” Hannibal grunts, humming out a low moan as Will’s practiced fingers work to awaken his drunken body to attention again. He wants to be bare, to spread and arch and twist, but Will sits heavy atop him, deliberately working him to hardness as Hannibal watches. Beautiful, powerful thing he is.

Hannibal has never been happier to bend for another.

Forever, now.

“I suppose I could make space for fishing equipment,” he breathes, throat clicking as - despite his sleepy mind and heavy body - his cock responds to welcome familiar touches. “And we can dedicate the second bedroom to a library.”

“I’m not sure how I’ll handle being able to sleep again,” Will grins, “without the clamor of students at every hour. You’ll have to exhaust me.”

“Or allow you to exhaust yourself,” counters Hannibal, a smile drawing up his eyes before they flutter closed on a long stroke that slicks back to bare the head of his cock. His groan is gloriously loud, always so loud, and Will kisses his bottom lip to let that sound carry free as they work their feet against the other’s trouser legs to peel them down.

“A two-bedroom flat then,” Will muses, “or a house. There’s always plenty in Jericho as lecturers and fellows come and go. Will you keep the house in London? Do you realize how mad this is?” he asks, laughing, as their pants fall free and Hannibal’s legs curl around Will’s hips.

“Frightfully,” Hannibal agrees, grinning, and grasping Will to roll them over, pressing Will to the bed now, rocking slow deliberate thrusts against him. “It’s ridiculous. We’re ridiculous. And I think a house, if we both want to exhaust ourselves and each other on a regular basis. Keeping up appearances and all that, would hardly do to keep the neighbours up and wondering.”

A kiss, deep and carrying with it a moan that Hannibal feeds to Will and feels immediately reciprocated, pulls them both to trembling silence for a moment.

“Do you know,” Hannibal murmurs, when they break to breathe, when he gets his hands on Will as Will has his on him and twists his wrist gently, “just how desperately I love you? Just as you are? Drunk and sleepy and horny, like this?”

“And in love,” adds Will, biting his bottom lip before releasing it in a grin as he stretches, coiling, beneath Hannibal’s gentle grasp.

“Are you?” Hannibal asks, amused.

“Until the end of days,” sighs Will. “You are all that I’ve ever wanted in the world.”

“And champagne.”

“And sometimes champagne,” Will allows, as they laugh against the other’s cheek. “From the moment I saw you, Hannibal, from the moment you kissed me and stared wide-eyed as as if awaiting your fate, I have wanted nothing more than to be with you, to live and settle and take care of you -”

“We’re nesting,” Hannibal muses, and the peace in that word alone brings Will’s heart and body to swifter, joyous movement. Hannibal pushes warmly down against him as Will arches up, tangling kisses and brushing cocks, every bit as decadent in their desires as they’ve always been but now with stability beneath their feet.

“Tell me again that you love me,” murmurs Will, eyes closing and lips parting as Hannibal kisses just against his ear. “Tell me about our home.”

Hannibal hums, nuzzling against the soft curve of Will’s neck. “I love you,” he murmurs, repeats it in French, in Lithuanian, in English again. “Silly, sweet, wonderful boy. Our home will be heavy with rich fabrics and warm scents. We will plant freesias in the garden, grow wisteria by the windows and wake to filtered sunlight through soft blooms and translucent leaves.”

A kiss pressed hot to Will’s cheek is dragged down to his jaw where Hannibal sucks a mark on him, possessive and loving. They are wet between their hands, comfortably hard for a good rutting, though sex may wait until morning.

“Books, Will, so many books. Old chairs and comfortable couches all over the place to lounge. We will have your fishing equipment there, anything you like, anything that makes our home ours.”

The words stir Will as much as Hannibal’s hands on him, as much as the claiming heat of his kiss, the thump of their hearts against the other’s chest. He slides his fingers through Hannibal’s hair and tugs enough to earn a snarl, half-grinning. Hannibal bends with the pull to sit up a little higher and span his hands over Will’s stomach. Their cocks jut together, nothing short of miraculous considering how much alcohol slows their blood, but they’ve yet to sate their hunger for the other after so many years apart.

Will likes to imagine that they never will.

“Maybe I can bring down Winston,” Will murmurs, brow lifting before he laughs. “He’s French, you can speak to him about me behind my back.”

“ _Excellent, I’ve always wanted to commiserate with someone who knows you as well as I_ ,” Hannibal murmurs and laughs when Will gently strikes him for the teasing. They are youthful and alive and far too awake for it being nearly morning. Hannibal can hear the birds singing soft outside the window, welcoming the dawn.

“Bring Winston,” Hannibal tells him, kissing Will again. “I bet he misses you, being so far away, when in war he was at your side.”

“You’ll have to vie for space with him,” Will smiles, their kiss touching again with a soft click of lips, again when their hips stroke slow together, languid thrusts against the other’s belly.

“As your spouse?”

Will bites his lip to muffle a helpless sound at the word, cheeks blooming flushed as he nods, grinning. Hannibal sighs, feigning burden, and reaches between them to clasp their cocks together. The sound that Will makes then is a deeper, more torrid thing, voice dipping low as he groans.

“Compromise is paramount to making any marriage work,” Will murmurs. He loops his arms around Hannibal’s neck to bring him close again, nuzzling against his cheek. “I’ll be home earlier than you. I can put dinner together so it’s ready when you get there.”

Hannibal hums, pushing warm panted breaths against smooth skin as he, too, grows closer and closer in his pleasure, with Will beneath him, their words between them.

“I’ll come home with flowers, then,” Hannibal replies, soft. “Make coffee in the morning, breakfast for you to hold between your teeth as you, inevitably late, make your way to the university.”

“All I’ve ever wanted,” Will gasps, turning his cheek into Hannibal’s palm when he rests it there, lips parted and panting damp heat against Hannibal’s skin. “You, Hannibal, you like this. Like that. With me, _oh_ -”

His breath shivers sharp, peaking in aching moan as Hannibal closes his hand a little tighter, sustaining their breathless pleasure between them. Will’s breath only rips free from him in a helpless laugh, squeezing Hannibal closer against him, arms wrapped tight.

“I’m so - so very close.”

“I know,” whispers Hannibal, eyes brightly narrowed with his smile.

“We might see each other around the campuses - so long as we’re discreet no one will care, Hannibal, it’s wonderful,” he promises. It isn’t Paris, what they do together is still illegal here and seems as if it shall always be, but in the universities, in the cities, more and more are willing to turn a blind eye so long as they are given the plausibility to do so. Will seeks a kiss, hardly able to close his lips together with the shortness of his breath, and against Hannibal’s cheek he whispers, delighted, “Two confirmed bachelors sharing space -”

“Dear friends.”

“Close as brothers,” laughs Will.

“Closer,” Hannibal chastens him, leaning down to press his weight more against Will, pulling a helpless moan from him as he draws him ever nearer his release. “Closer,” he coaxes.

“Yes,” Will breathes, and Hannibal kisses him. Bodies trembling together, shifting slick in sweat and precome as they enjoy each other entirely. Hannibal turns his face against Will’s trembling palm and kisses it, kisses every curved and elegant finger in turn.

“Come for me,” he whispers. “Show me, Will, show me how good this feels.”

Hannibal’s voice carries to the core of Will’s being, tightening his stomach, stiffening his movements. It always has, whether or not they understood each other, the mere whisper of the other saying their name enough to undo them both. Will cries out against Hannibal’s cheek, laughing, gasping, shuddering all at once as he stripes their stomachs with wet heat. Hannibal moans loud and long as he joins Will in their fall against the other, muscles clenching, their hips driving together in slow rutting pleasure as they spread seed between themselves.

“I love you,” Will whispers, nuzzling Hannibal’s temple as they lay heavy together, setting his chin to Hannibal’s shoulder to allow himself room to catch his breath. He wraps Hannibal in his arms and squeezes, just to feel the density of this extraordinary man against him. “And I will tell you so every morning, every evening. Forever, Hannibal, so long as you’re mine, I will have you hear it and know.”

“I knew then,” Hannibal whispers, turning his head to nuzzle behind Will’s ear, humming warmth and pleasure as a smile spreads across his lips. “I knew you loved me then, I could feel it in the warmth of your words, the way you touched me. I still ask myself what the hell I could have possibly done to deserve you,”

Hannibal kisses him then, warm and wet against his cheek and extricates himself from a reluctant and sleepy Will.

“I’ll get something with which to clean us up,” he whispers, touching Will’s hair, his face, letting his hand be kissed before he goes.

Recalling only as he turns that they are not at home, but in something very much like it, Hannibal seeks for his pants and tugs them on, leaving the trousers behind as he steps from the room. The house is dark but there is life within it, not only from the great outpouring of passion still electric in his body, but elsewhere. A waft of cigarette smoke is answer enough and Hannibal follows it, down the stairs and to the porch, the door cracked open.

There Anthony sits, still drunk but far less riotous about it than he had been earlier in the night. He'd banged on at length to Hannibal about the Americans burning books they’ve not even read while holding up stiff-mannered minimalists in response, before turning to Will and engaging in a protracted, laughing battle over their schools again. He’d ended up standing on the couch, but he sits now as if in repose, sideways across the arms of his chair, gaze sleepy but a particular ease softening his features, lit by a flare of his cigarette as he drags long. Without lifting his eyes, he hands it to Hannibal as he steps out into the chilly night air, skin drying stiff and hardly a mind for it at all.

“ _We didn’t mean to wake you_ ,” Hannibal tells him, accepting the cigarette for a drag before passing it back.

“ _I’m glad to be woken_ ,” answers Anthony. He parts his lips with his tongue and laughs on a breath. “ _I’ve missed you, you know. And this. And him, but more in the manner of mourning, I suppose. I’m glad to have been wrong about that._ ”

Hannibal makes a sound and settles on the ground before the chair, leaning back enough that Anthony’s fingers can thread through his hair and stroke his scalp.

“ _I missed you immeasurably when I left for the front_ ,” Hannibal tells him. “ _You were so angry when I told you I was going, do you remember_?”

“ _I told you I would kill you myself if you died out there_ ,” Anthony recalls, snorting. “ _Hardly an eloquent comeback. I was terrified you wouldn’t come back._ ”

“ _I was terrified when I did and you were gone_ ,” Hannibal tells him, accepting the cigarette again. “ _Had no idea if you had gone home, if you had gone to war to make good on your promise to me. Hell, I had no idea where anyone was. Paris felt empty, I felt like part of me had been cut away and sacrificed for something. I didn’t even know what._ ”

“ _You think too much_ ,” Anthony tells him softly, and Hannibal laughs, nodding, feeling soft fingertips massage his scalp.

“ _I think you’re braver than you realize_ ,” Hannibal says. “ _And that you don’t recognize how much you mean to us both._ ”

Anthony makes a sound, not of protest but of consideration, lax enough from both long-desired company and liquor to find himself contemplative rather than combative. His fingernails curl against Hannibal’s hair and he shivers, accepting the cigarette that Anthony offers against his lips.

“ _It was a cataclysm_ ,” he says, “ _and our years before it the calm before the storm. Anyone who saw you together then could see what had happened. The wholeness you found together that leaves little room for anyone, anything else. And so in separation it wasn’t merely a parting of friends or lovers, it was a sundering. Can I tell you something? Promise you’ll not think less of me for it, there’s hardly anything left to think less of._ ”

“ _Always, Anthony, and never._ ”

“ _I must make my confession then, that I hoped when he left, you would let me fill that empty space beside you. Terrible, isn’t it? Love usually is. But hope remained only that, even though I knew I couldn’t and so I wouldn’t try. I like you both far too much for that_ ,” he shrugs. “ _So I played translator, I made efforts to ensure you both had as many memories as you could manage in so short a time, and tried to keep your remaining pieces together after he left. And then you left -_ ”

Hannibal hums.

“ _\- and I was angry. Yes. I was left bereft that after so long you would go, just so. The loneliness, Hannibal, God - you know it well enough not to need my failing words for it_ ,” Anthony snorts. “ _It was altogether what I’d known would happen since the moment you met but_ -”

“ _But_?”

“ _But hope is a far thornier weed than the little blossoms poets use to describe it_ ,” Anthony says. “ _I’d never felt more useless to the world than as one by one those dearest to me vanished. Is it terrible to say all this? It should be a happy night, I think, but the wine’s made me maudlin._ ”

Hannibal leans his head back against Anthony’s thigh and accepts the gentle petting as the poet finishes his cigarette and flicks it, uncaring, into the dark bushes by the porch. In truth, Hannibal had always imagined that he and the wild, beautiful Englishman would end up together in the end, no one else to match their energy, no one else to match their desire to remain untamed. He had seen Anthony come and go with others, and come and gone himself, but he had always thought, always hoped, that in the end they would come together again and it would be for the last time, and they would stay.

And then Will. Unexpected and beautiful in his own unique way, he won Hannibal’s heart in such a way that no pretending could sever that connection, and the tentative hope for himself and his best friend slowly withered.

Hannibal will never tell him.

“ _You poets are a maudlin lot_ ,” Hannibal tells him, and turns his eyes up to look at Anthony, though the other does not look down to him. With shifting motions, Hannibal turns and rests his chin against Anthony’s leg instead. “ _Don’t blame the wine._ ”

His smile widens as Anthony slips his eyes to him, his look dry, and he nuzzles against his friend more. There is love there, unspoken, between them. Unending and too strong to be broken my time and circumstance. They are here. They will always be here.

“ _Piss off_ ,” Anthony snorts, and Hannibal gently slaps his thigh.

“ _Language._ ”

“ _My home, my porch, my fucking language_ ,” Anthony declares, unable to muster any real ardency to it, and instead just folding his arms over his stomach. He tilts his head to meet Hannibal’s gaze, and satisfied with what he sees there, turns them upwards again towards the clear autumn sky, lightening in increments with the rising sun. “I’m glad you finally came to see me. I hadn’t wanted to ask.”

“Why not?”

“You’re busy doctoring, I’m busy making life a living hell for undergraduates,” he says, allowing Hannibal to loosen his arms to set Anthony’s hand back to his hair. He curls his fingers and tugs the sleek strands in slow strokes.

“And?”

Anthony grins a little, despite himself. “It seemed unconscionably desperate. Even if I hadn’t accepted the potentiality of our cavorting, I could never manage to find the words for a letter like that.”

“A poet left speechless,” Hannibal chides him, earning a bit of a harder tug for it.

“‘Dear Hannibal’,” Anthony begins. “‘I’m tired of fucking the same three known queers who reside in Cambridge, and more exhausted still of the secretive ones. I’m tremendously lonely, thanks in large part to being surrounded by scant more than boorish academics, pseudo-intellectuals, and children. Please, for the love of the Queen, come and see me for even an afternoon and I will ply you with so much drink in reward that you’ll have no choice but to stay for supper, too. Yours politely and with utmost regard...’” He snorts, but a smile lingers in the corners of his eyes. “Dull, Hannibal, very dull. No one wishes to spend time with the bored and lonely, who find themselves moreso for their own inherent tedium.”

Hannibal laughs too, warm and sleepy, and turns his head into the soft touches that caress him.

“‘Dearest Anthony,’” he recites back. “‘It has been many years, and as you are surrounded by the boring and the bored, I am surrounded by the sick and and the sultry. I would love nothing more than good company, bad wine and a decent fuck. Please send a ticket by return of post and you will find your home invaded.’”

He raises his eyes and grins at Anthony as the other regards him with a look of mild surprise and great amusement.

“Do you ever miss Paris?” Hannibal asks him. “Besides us, the house, the company. Do you miss the city?”

Sleepy scarlet fingers stretch across the sky, grasping into livid violet and indigo. Anthony watches the colors shift for a moment, and shakes his head a little.

“Yes,” he says. “And no. I miss her freedom, her acceptance. The English are still so stodgy compared to the continent, and lifestyles lived beautifully in Paris would find one doing two years hard labor here. I miss knowing where it’s safe to go at night, whole neighborhoods ours for the claiming. I miss being able to speak openly with others in whom I have an interest without risking loss of livelihood or life for it.”

He reaches for his cigarettes but Hannibal grasps his hand, gathering Anthony’s fingers against his mouth to breathe warmth against them. Anthony touches gently, and offers a small smile.

“But were I to return and expect it to be the same is a false promise. It was a very particular moment, all our lights burning to the wick with the awareness that should the lines break, they’d be extinguished entirely. I’ve thought about Berlin, from what I’ve heard I could live a poor and happy life among the artistic set.” He rolls his shoulders in a shrug, genuine in his indecision. “There are sacrifices made with that as well, and here at least I’m paid enough to keep myself in books and wine and the occasional party without having to do torrid things for it.”

“ _Well_ ,” Hannibal tells him, German low and rumbled in his throat from lack of practice. “ _Should you find yourself in Berlin, I shall have to await a tearful moping letter asking me to come and visit you_.”

Anthony’s crooked grin spreads wide, and he lets his hand come to rest against Hannibal’s cheek, stroking a thumb beneath his eye.

“ _Someday you’ll stop surprising me, and then you’ll never see another letter_ ,” he muses. “ _I should expect you to write one, but you’ve always liked when I beg_.”

“ _You do it so well_ ,” Hannibal purrs, turning into Anthony’s hand, bringing his own up to hold it gently close to kiss, again and again, before he unfolds himself from the ground and bends to kiss Anthony’s forehead instead. “Get to bed,” he sighs. “I need to clean myself up, return to my wayward soldier. I will wake before you will, and raid your kitchen for something to make us brunch with.”

“Terrible.”

“Always.” Another kiss, chaste and warm, and Hannibal leaves his hand against Anthony’s shoulder as he walks around him and enters the house again, making his way to the bathroom. He relieves himself, washes his hands and himself, and dampens a cloth to take back up to Will. When he passes the front door again, it is closed, no one on the porch, and the door to Anthony’s room is closed as well.

Hannibal passes it by on silent cat feet, and enters their room with a quiet sigh.

Will has pulled the sheets up from the side of the bed and rolled himself snug within, curled tight and snoring softly. The sensation of fingers in his hair stirs him with a fussy sound, but he eases into a smile when he sees Hannibal above.

“How do you do,” he grins, nuzzling back into the pillow.

“Very well,” answers Hannibal, “but I’ll be better still in bed with you.”

He sets a hand to Will’s shoulder and guides him in unrolling back across the bed, replete with a fond little curse as he goes. Spread along his back Will shivers, and then coils tight, laughing, as the warm, wet cloth is swiped across his stomach.

“ _You’re always so dirty_ ,” Hannibal chides him in warm French. “ _Making messes wherever you go, of me, yourself, the bed. Look at you, beautiful Will. What am I to do with you_?”

Will spreads a hand across his face, grinning - always, since the beginning, delighted to be scolded by Hannibal in this way.

Hannibal tends to him with such care, making sure Will is entirely clean, entirely comfortable, before folding the cloth several times over and setting it to the bedside table to restore to the bathroom later, when they wake again. Then he takes his place beside Will and allows himself to be arranged as Will wants him, turning his back to Will’s chest as he spoons him, breathing soft and warm against Hannibal’s shoulder.

He sets a hand to Will’s and strokes there, contented, sleepy, warm.

Utterly, desperately, in love.

“I love you,” Hannibal whispers to him. “I love you so much.”

Will squeezes him a little closer, spreading his hand and kneading it catlike through the warm hair on his chest. His knees press to the backs of Hannibal’s own, and their bodies slot together close as can be before Will settles. He tucks a sleepy kiss against the back of Hannibal’s neck and nuzzles against his hair, breathing in the familiar scent of his sweat, the traces of cigarette smoke clinging to his hair.

“Only you,” answers Will, his smile lingering until the heat of Hannibal against him and the sound of waking birds outside eases him to sleep once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beginning Thursday, we hope you'll stay with us a while in Cambridge for new love and bad blood, wrapped in champagne and poetry.


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